{"id":8807,"date":"2015-04-03T14:32:54","date_gmt":"2015-04-03T14:32:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=8807"},"modified":"2015-04-03T14:32:54","modified_gmt":"2015-04-03T14:32:54","slug":"yep-sen-menendez-ought-to-quit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=8807","title":{"rendered":"Yep, Sen. Menendez ought to quit"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n<p>The curious world of politics at times deprives politicians of the presumption of innocence granted to &#8220;ordinary citizens.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Such is the case with U.S. Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., who&#8217;s been indicted on a host of corruption charges.<\/p>\n<p>He ought to quit the Senate and pursue his defense as a private citizen.<\/p>\n<p><iframe class=\"wp-embedded-content\" sandbox=\"allow-scripts\" security=\"restricted\" title=\"Step Down, Senator Robert Menendez \" src=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/svc\/oembed\/html\/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2015%2F04%2F03%2Fopinion%2Fstep-down-senator-robert-menendez.html#?secret=e0PBBQXIcz\" data-secret=\"e0PBBQXIcz\" scrolling=\"no\" frameborder=\"0\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>A federal grand jury indicted Menendez on felony counts relating to his close relationship with an eye doctor, Soloman Melgen, who flew Menendez to the Dominican Republic on his private jet &#8212; trips that Menendez failed to disclose to congressional ethics officials.<\/p>\n<p>There&#8217;s a lot of other allegations involving favors exchanged between the men. The amazing detail of the indictment suggests there&#8217;s considerable fire under all that smoke.<\/p>\n<p>Is the senator guilty? I have no clue.<\/p>\n<p>This much is clear: His service in the U.S. Senate will be clouded forever by this indictment. How in the world can this man conduct the public&#8217;s business when he is defending himself against a federal indictment?<\/p>\n<p>Why does this matter to anyone outside of his home state? Well, he&#8217;s a federal official himself and he votes on laws that affect all Americans, even those of us out here in Flyover Country.<\/p>\n<p>As the New York Time editorialized in calling for his resignation: &#8220;Mr. Menendez is evidently not in a hurry to get to the stage of contrition, having warned on Wednesday that he\u2019s &#8216;not going anywhere.&#8217; He would be doing a disservice to New Jersey by clinging to power as a disgraced politician. His colleagues in the Senate should demand that he step aside.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Politics can be a dirty business. It doesn&#8217;t allow for the normal presumptions of innocence granted to non-politicians. That&#8217;s the way it is.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The curious world of politics at times deprives politicians of the presumption of innocence granted to &#8220;ordinary citizens.&#8221; Such is the case with U.S. Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., who&#8217;s been indicted on a host of corruption charges. He ought to quit the Senate and pursue his defense as a private citizen. A federal grand jury &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=8807\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Yep, Sen. Menendez ought to quit<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,14],"tags":[1161,1703,1705,3262,3732,3982,4309,4980],"class_list":["post-8807","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-national-news","category-political-news","tag-corruption","tag-federal-grand-jury","tag-federal-indictment","tag-new-jersey","tag-presumption-of-innocence","tag-robert-menendez","tag-soloman-melgen","tag-u-s-senate"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8807","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8807"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8807\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8807"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8807"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8807"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}